


Do You Remember?

by heffalumps



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 23:47:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12736767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heffalumps/pseuds/heffalumps
Summary: Beneath the trees, the Inquisitor holds the love of her life in her arms.Prompt: Do you remember?





	Do You Remember?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alacarton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alacarton/gifts).



The world was golden, the endless horizon stretching westward towards the setting sun. Wind moved through the trees, quieting the music of the dwindling day. Birds fell silent and the leaves of the trees they called home whispered a final time, then moved no more. As the sky darkened, everything fell away until there were only two people left in the entire world.

It was here that she held him.

“Do you remember? Do you remember when we met? You were so scared of me at first.” The ghost of a laugh in her throat interrupted the sentence, and she had to pause for a moment before continuing. “Fine, fine. You can see right through me, can’t you? I’ll admit it. I wasn’t too fond of you to begin with, either. Old habits and all that.” She smoothed his hair down with her fingers, then ran them through it, ruffling it again affectionately.

“Truth be told, I was so certain we’d never get along. You were so full of it.” The corner of her mouth quirked up into a small smile. “We managed to get over it, though, didn’t we? Do you remember? When we met on the eastern battlements for the first time, right after we’d moved to Skyhold? We both thought no one else ever went there and just wanted to get away from everyone for a while. Instead, I guess we found each other. I only wish it had happened sooner.

“I don’t mind though, not really. It was perfect. The first time we touched, the first time we kissed… the first time we spent the night together.” She chuckled again, lightly trailing her fingertips down his cheek, feeling the stubble there. When they reached the scar on his lip, the one she could have traced by heart, they stopped. “I don’t know if I can ever mind anything again after _that_ particular night.” She looked up at the whispering trees around them, lost deep in her memories. “It was very much like this, wasn’t it? A warm summer night, Skyhold sleeping around us. I couldn’t remember that anything else existed outside of the two of us. You’d better not laugh at this, but I knew at that moment that we were… we were forever.” She huffed derisively at her own choice of words. “I know, I know. I don’t usually say things like this, but now… I suppose I have to.

“I’ve never known anything like this. I don’t know if I ever told you that… but I’m saying it now. This… what it is between us... I will never be the same. Not after you.”

Her arms tightened around his head and shoulders pillowed in her lap, and she breathed in the scent of him - as muddled as it was by the circumstances, it was still undeniably him. Warm leather, pine needles, and a hint of something she had never been able to place that was simply _him_. She took another deep breath, and then leaned down to press her lips to his forehead, committing everything to memory: the feeling of his skin against hers, the roughness of the stubble on his cheeks, the weight of him in her arms.

The moon was rising on the horizon. They were running out of time.

“I don’t think I can do this. I don’t… I don’t think I can say goodbye to you.” All the humor in her voice faded, and she finally looked back at him again. At the soft curve of his lips, where his breath had once tickled her lips when they kissed. At the fine-hewn lines of his nose and jaw, still handsome enough to break her heart, even now. And at his eyes, the warm brown of them that had once seen straight into her heart and soul grown long since cold.

“They’re going to come take you away soon. They only promised to give us until darkness fell.”

The tears she had been holding back threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed them aside, knowing that if she allowed her grief to take her she would lose control. And this was her last chance to tell him everything - she would not waste it.

“Maybe I won’t say goodbye. If things were the other way around, would you say it? Or would you just believe we’d see each other again, somewhere? You always had so much… faith. I wish… I wish I did.” She drew a shaky breath in through her teeth, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat that strangled her words. “But I don’t… I don’t think think I can do it. I don’t think I can believe that. I think… I think this was it for us.”

This was real. As she spoke the words, it finally sunk in. This was her life now. When she rose from here, walked away, she would be forced to live out the rest of her days without him by her side. The emptiness she felt was where they had once been joined, linked in this life by something she had never been able to understand. Now, that other half of her was gone.

These would be her final words to him, whispered through tears she had finally lost control over. She felt the magnitude of them as they fell off her lips, unwilling to say them but knowing she must. She was running out of time. They would be here to take him soon.

“I’ll never forget. I love you.”

She was not ready.

**Author's Note:**

> for Sara. Because I love you, and I want you to suffer.
> 
> ♥,  
> effe


End file.
